The Last Himeyuri, ひめゆり — Prologue
Here is the first installment of my Himeyuri story. I must stress again (and throughout this project) that this is pure fiction. While the story is based on the last months of World War II and the Japanese nurse aides of Okinawa, the characters are not based on anyone living or dead.
The narrator of the story is a teenager named Kohitsuji, which is Japanese for the word lamb, baby sheep. The original title of this story was going to be Red Lamb, an homage to the L.A. band The Monolators and the song I was listening non-stop to throughout February. While I am still in love with the song I have since abandoned attempts to work it into the plot though I am keeping the name.
Since this is a rough draft attempt at a movie, I placed the dialog where I imagine it go in the form of subtitles but I am sure with better direction things can be changed around. Either way, please enjoy.
Prologue:
[Kohitsuji in half-shadow, reading aloud]
“Can we do nothing?
Even the red lamb cannot
make nothing happen.”That is the last poem I ever wrote. But what good are words if there's no one to hear them? What good is a story if there is no one to tell it to? I cannot tell you what should have happened; only what did. There are too many “ifs” to say anything else … If we had not gone to war. If the Americans had not crossed the ocean seeking revenge. If the Imperial Army had not seen Okinawa as its last defense against an unhonorable, miserable defeat …
[Cut to Mother]
… then I would have been an onarigami like my mother and her mother; a shaman, my village's priestess …
[Cut to Kohitsuji in tears]
… but of course, that never happened.
[Cut: small Okinawa house. S/X: the world is oppressive with humid air and the suffocating racket of incests. Cut: to Mother at her writing desk.]
Mother [calling]: Kohitsuji?
Kohitsuji [off screen]: Yes, Okkaa-san?
Mother: I see you are going against my wishes. You are really going to do this?
Kohitsuji: Why are you asking me this? Of course. I am going to earn the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun! I want to make you proud of me!
Mother [close up of her writing the word “kata/ direction” in Japanese script]: You are my daughter … of course I am proud of you!
Kohitsuji: That's not what I mean, I am part of the Himeyuri! That is … an honor!
Mother: Kohitsuji, what do you think will happen when the Americans get here? Do you have any idea what they are capable of doing? Look at this word I am writing …
Kohitsuji: That's why I need to do something! I can't just sit here and let nothing happen.
Mother [echo]: “Let nothing happen?” But what about your poetry? What about being our priestess? Our onarigami? Are you giving all that up then?
Kohitsuji: My poetry? What good are poets when our family, our friends, our neighbors and gods – all of us, all of this, everything worth putting into a poem – can be raped and bombed and killed by the enemy?
[Sudden cut to Kohitsuji half in shadows, a memory]: I really should have tried to lie to my mother but I am so blunt. I am always getting lost. Like I have any direction … like either of us had any idea of what was about to happen.
Mother [softly]: I didn't raise you up to the age of fifteen only to die.
Kohitsuji [angry]: I am done writing poetry, I am going to make something happen!
[Cut to Kohitsuji in half-shadow]
“To make something happen?” [laughs] I so badly wanted to “make something happen” … to be part of something … part of the glorious Himeyuri, the Star Lily Corps., the nurses of the Imperial 3rd Army preparing to defend our beloved Okinawa.
“To give our lives saving lives,/ to die caring for the wounded.”
… My name means Lamb. There are no sheep on our island … my mother thought Lamb would sound like something new, rare, astounding … a bloody little lamb of war.
But I never lied to my mother. This really is my last poem. The only thing I leave behind so you can remember me.
“Can we do nothing?
Even the red lamb cannot
make nothing happen.”
* Most of the music, unless otherwise stated, are original bits from one of the members of from Severus & The Death Eaters. Cheers, mate!